Tell us your storm story
Are you an Irish person impacted by Hurricane Milton? Tell us your story using the form below or email Jack.White@irishtimes.com
Hurricane Milton is now moving off the east coast of Florida though it is still producing damaging hurricane-force winds and heavy rainfall in east-central Florida, according to the latest update from the US National Hurricane Center (NHC).
Hurricane Milton crashed into Florida as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday, pounding the coast with ferocious winds of more than 160km/h (100m/h) and producing a series of tornadoes around the state.
The cyclone had maximum sustained winds of 205km/h as it roared ashore 8.30pm local time near Siesta Key, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said.
More than three million homes and businesses were without power in Florida
The storm is bringing a potentially deadly storm surge to much of Florida’s Gulf Coast, including densely populated areas such as Tampa, St Petersburg, Sarasota and Fort Myers.
Heavy rains were also likely to cause flooding inland along rivers and lakes as Milton traverses the Florida peninsula as a hurricane, eventually to emerge in the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday.
Hurricane Milton spawned powerful tornadoes across the state that resulted in some loss of life, according to one county sheriff. The tornadoes were reported to have damaged more than 100 structures around the state, and several people were injured, authorities said.
Milton ripped off the roof of Tampa Bay Rays’ stadium, video footage shows
Main Points
- Hurricane Milton is now moving off the east coast of Florida
- It is still producing damaging hurricane-force winds and heavy rainfall
- NHC warned there is a danger of life-threatening storm surge along the coast
- Deaths from powerful tornadoes spawned by hurricane
- More than three million homes and businesses are without power
- Heavy rains are also likely to cause flooding inland along rivers and lakes
- Irish woman living in evacuation zone says it is ‘too late’ to leave
That’s all for today’s live blog, thanks for reading. More updates to come elsewhere on The Irish Times app and website.
Read a full report on Hurricane Milton here.
‘Too soon to tell’ how many have died, says governor
Florida officials said on Thursday that search and rescue efforts were ongoing. So far this morning, officials have reported over 42 rescues in several counties. As of Thursday morning, governor Ron DeSantis said that “it was too soon to tell” how many people had died in the storm - The Guardian
Some of the scenes in Tampa so far in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton:
Florida starts to assess Hurricane Milton damage
More than 3 million Floridians are without power as officials begin to assess the damage caused by Hurricane Milton, a category 3 storm that flashed across a central swath of the state overnight on Wednesday.
Parts of Sarasota, Fort Myers and other Gulf coast cities were inundated by up to 10ft of storm surge while tornadoes wrecked buildings, including a sheriff’s department facility, the skies turned purple and winds as high as 120mph turned cars, trees and debris into projectiles.
Milton made landfall on Siesta Key south of St Petersburg around 8.30pm. Eight hours later it was moving offshore just north of Cape Canaveral as a category 1 hurricane with winds of 85mph, according to the US National Hurricane Center.
A crane collapsed in downtown St Petersburg leaving a gash in an office building, blocking a street, the water supply was cut, and the roof of a Major League Baseball stadium was ripped off.
It will take days of the damage to be assessed, but insurers have warned that losses could reach $60bn. Tornadoes that accompanied the approach of the storm may prove as damaging as the hurricane itself: at least 116 tornado warnings had been issued across Florida, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, said on Wednesday evening.
Early on Thursday, four deaths were confirmed in St Lucie County on Florida’s Atlantic coast, where officials said tornadoes touched down. Kevin Guthrie, director for the Florida division of emergency management, said that early reports indicated about 125 homes were destroyed, mostly mobile homes in senior communities.
Inland, some 11 million people are at risk of flash and river flooding after some parts of the state received one-in-1,000-year amounts of rain.
In Bradenton, north of Sarasota, the police chief said “probably” more than 60% of the city has no electricity. In Hillsborough county, which includes Tampa, the sheriff’s office said there were “downed power lines and trees everywhere”.
But the powerful storm surge that authorities predicted ahead of Milton’s arrival may not have been as bad as projected. Communities to the north of Siesta Key were hit by heavy raining, predicted to be up to 18in, while areas to the south, including Fort Myers Beach and Naples, were hit by the storm’s sea-surge.
Some forecast models had predicted that Milton would hit squarely on Tampa Bay’s inlet, creating a 15ft storm surge, but the storm’s path wobbled, directing it about about 70 miles south to hit the beaches. Still, just inland from Tampa, the flooding in Plant City was “absolutely staggering”, according the city manager, Bill McDaniel. Emergency crews rescued 35 people overnight, said McDaniel, who estimated the city had received 13.5in of rain.”We have flooding in places and to levels that I’ve never seen, and I’ve lived in this community for my entire life,” he said on Thursday morning.
Ahead of Milton’s arrival, the state had issued mandatory evacuation orders across 15 Florida counties with a total population of about 7.2 million people. Anyone who stayed behind was warned they would have to fend for themselves until Milton passed over.
Among some who stayed were 12 workers at Tampa’s zoo, located in the evacuation zone, where they made sure the orangutans have their blankets, manatees had a supplies of lettuce and the rhinoceroses had bamboo.
Now, Florida is faced with a massive cleanup. In Orlando, Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and Sea World remained closed on Thursday. At a news conference, DeSantis said 9,000 national guard members were ready to step in, as well as 50,000 utility workers from as far as California.”Unfortunately, there will be fatalities. I don’t think there’s any way around that,” DeSantis said - The Guardian.
The storm surge warning along Florida’s west coast has been discontinued by the US National Hurricane Center (NHC).
However, in its latest update, the NHC warned of a danger of life-threatening storm surge from Hurricane Milton along the coast from east-central Florida northward to southern Georgia, where a storm surge warning remains in effect.
The NHC said the centre of Milton is pulling away from the east coast though strong gusty winds and heavy rainfall is still cccurring near the space coast.
The Tampa Bay metropolitan area appears to have escaped without the catastrophic flooding that had been feared. Authorities were still waiting for rivers to crest but so far water levels were at or below what they received with Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said on Thursday morning - Reuters
At least Four dead in St.Lucie County
At least four people died in St. Lucie County as Hurricane Milton tore across Florida overnight, CNN reported on Thursday, citing county officials.
The storm flattened a retirement community in the county, CNN said, citing the local sheriff - Reuters
Conor Doherty, a Derry native, who lives in the Tampa area and works in disaster relief sent his family out of the path of Hurricane Milton to stay with relatives in California while he “went an hour inland” to Orlando before tackling the post Hurricane clear up.
”My power is off and my area is flooded” he told RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show.
“They’re saying it’s just like a little river over there, you know, and it’s going to take a little time to get power back. A couple of my friends have been saying they’ve seen stuff like cranes going through buildings and stuff like that, dumpsters flying. So it’s going to be a considerable bit of damage,” he said.
Mr Doherty said he and his crew had been attempting to clear up the streets after Hurricane Helene, some of that debris had not been cleared away.
“I’d say 70 percent or 80 percent of the city didn’t get their belongings taken away. Yeah, I saw it just laying on the side of the road.
“It’s going to be interesting to go back. We’re just waiting on the call to go back today and get it started again,” he said.
Mr Doherty said that on Monday “we knew something was brewing” so he encouraged his wife and family to go California where they have relatives as he was “taking no chances”.
However, he knew of others who said they had nowhere to go as hotels were booked up so they had stayed put.
“I’ve heard there’s quite a few rescues needed to be made and some deaths there. So yeah, it’s been a little crazy for sure,” he said.
Many of the structures in the Tampa area had not been built to withstand a hurricane, he added.
“These are old buildings. The winds are anything upwards of 80mph or 90mph, so you’re going to have serious damage if these buildings weren’t built to withstand this in the 1960s or 1970s,” he said adding: “A lot of them won’t have a chance to stand through it.”
Mr Doherty said he and his crew of 100 will have to do mitigation work as well as clean up saying, in some cases, there was six or seven feet of water in houses.
Paul McCarthy from Cork who lives in Florida recalled thinking “this is it” when Hurricane Milton struck on Wednesday night.
”This was my fifth hurricane and it was the worst for sure. We were asked to evacuate and I was never asked to evacuate before from this building,” he said.
Mr McCarthy lives on the fifth floor of a condominium in a golf resort which was now “like a lake” while houses “beyond the fairway are like submarines right now. One house was destroyed and I’m a mile and a half from the beaches.”
He lives in Sarasota, west of Tampa.
The Ballincollig native estimated that between 60 percent and 70 percent of houses in the area have been destroyed. Some had already been damaged by Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, he said.
“We were lucky that we didn’t get a big surge yesterday. But it’s like there’s no beach, there are two beaches and now there’s no sand.
“That’s all in Orlando. And then we got hit last night. So it’s a double whammy. It’s the first time everybody had to evacuate and the island is gone and the beaches are destroyed,” he told Cork’s RedFM.
Mr McCarthy and some of his neighbours who also live on higher floors in the concrete building had decided to stick it out rather than evacuate.
“It was the first time I was scared,” he said adding he is now hopeful that the worst has passed.
“It’s still windy outside. It’s still making noise and it’s very eerie. There’s no electricity anywhere, but we’re surviving.
”It’s like a war zone. It’s very eerie and it’s very sad.”
- Vivienne Clarke
Cathy Tobin, originally from Waterfall, Co Cork lives in downtown Orlando with her husband Tom, also from Cork, and one of her three children.
Her husband Tom, a lieutenant in the local fire department has been working throughout the night and will continue to do so for the next few hours, she said.
He is currently helping residents trapped by fallen trees to escape their homes, she said shortly after 6:30am local time.
Although Hurricane Milton passed just above Orlando, she described strong winds throughout the night.
“I was getting loads of tornado warnings and flash flood warnings on my phone throughout the night,” she said adding that the level of sound coming from the wind near her home resembled that of a tornado.
Her power has been gone since about 2am, she said.
The primary school principal said: “Saying goodbye to staff and just not knowing what shape everyone is going to be in in a couple of days is just so surreal.”
“I was very nervous about this one, I tend to be a bit jaded around the hurricanes, having been through so many of them.
“But this one and all the messaging around it being one of the most intense and quickest forming Gulf hurricanes ever, and hearing it labeled the storm of the century or hearing people say: ‘Get out or you’ll die’ is not good for your mental health,” she said.
“It’s been a rough couple of days but I’m feeling a slight sense of relief now and hopefully as soon as the sun comes up, I’ll feel even better,” she said.
‘This is the worst night they’ve ever had’
In an update from Ann Dillon, a 62-year-old retired nurse from Mullingar, Co Westmeath, living on the east coast, she said she has not slept, and has been keeping in touch with other Irish expats across Florida “all night”.
“Very few people are going to sleep in this, how could you sleep with it? It’s unbelievable,” she said shortly after 6am local time.
“This is the worst night they’ve ever had, because people have experienced other hurricanes here but this one was the worst, it really was,” she said of the gusts and heavy rainfall, adding no one will know the true impact until daylight comes.
She said three separate tornadoes were reported in her area, Vero Beach, on Wednesday afternoon prior to Hurricane Milton’s arrival, while a 40-minute drive away, multiple deaths were reported following several tornadoes in Fort Pierce.
The deaths occurred at Spanish Lakes Country Club Village, an older community, according to local media reports, while a sheriff’s office was also destroyed in the area.
“There were three in this little town of Vero Beach. I’m feeling like the luckiest person to be alive,” she said.
She believes Hurricane Milton, just two weeks after Helene, “will change a lot of people’s minds on Florida because it’s very risky here”.
‘Some people are hysterically upset, others are out there helping’ says Mullingar woman living on Florida’s east coast
Despite being within the projected path of Hurricane Milton, Ann Dillon, a 62-year-old from Mullingar, Co Westmeath, counts herself lucky as she is living on the east coast.
Speaking on Wednesday prior to Hurricane Milton’s arrival, she hoped the hurricane will have waned in strength by the time it reaches her home in Vero Beach, a two-hour drive or so from where the hurricane made landfall.
Ms Dillon said Flordians in general are “petrified”.
She lived through previous extreme weather events in the area such as Hurricane Irma in 2017 during which mass evacuations were ordered, including in Brevard County, where she lived at the time, though she remained.
“This is definitely different because it is a monster of a storm and we saw the damage that Helene did and that didn’t even landfall in Florida. It’s just a disaster, it really is.
“Because Milton is coming and going right across, if it goes a bit further north, we’ll be breathing a bit easier but I’m right across from Tampa,” she said.
Her house is a newer build, with hurricane-proof glass windows and doors, she said. “I’m a little concerned but I’m not too worried,” she said adding: “The state is pretty narrow but by the time it hits us it will most likely be in the early hours of Thursday morning,” she says.
The retired nurse moved to Florida some 30 years ago for the weather, she explains. Now, she runs traditional Irish music sessions in several areas in the state, playing the accordion and concertina.
“Everybody’s putting shutters on their businesses and homes, we’re bracing ourselves for a category one or two because when it hits it will probably be a three or four,” she said, explaining that she is about 160 miles from where the hurricane is due to make landfall.
People in her area were “stocking up like crazy,” she says, adding that she was unable to find a case of water in her local Walmart days prior to the hurricane’s arrival.
“These are monsters so we prepare just as much as if it’s going to hit here, people go out and go crazy, buying everything like water and food,” she said.
“Some people are hysterically upset, others are out there helping,” she said.
Belfast man Leonard Nugent, who lives in Florida, told RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show “the noise from the wind is unbelievable”.
“We’ve lost a few panels from the roof we have in the backyard, they’re gone. And the noise is just unbelievable more than anything else. You know, we got torrential rain here as well at the moment.
“We got a curfew notice from the sheriff telling us we can’t leave our homes till 10am the next morning, which is 10am today and we also had tornado warnings as well.
“We can’t leave, we can do nothing but we are outside the evacuation area. But our house, we are lucky with a purpose-built, hurricane-proof house. So we’re very lucky as opposed to a lot of poor souls out there in timber-frame houses and RVs out there that people are living in,” he said.
Mr Nugent said he was keeping in touch with friends and neighbours through WhatsApp, adding many people could not afford to go anywhere even if there was an evacuation order. “And some people are maybe just stubborn and won’t have gone,” he said.
He said Hurricane Helene, which arrived just two weeks ago, “wasn’t too bad”.
“But with this one, we have so much information on that. We brought everything actually inside the house, we filled up our bath with water,” he said adding the shelves in Walmart were “empty” two days ago.
– Vivienne Clarke
Hurricane Milton is now moving off the east coast of Florida though it is still producing damaging hurricane-force winds and heavy rainfall in east-central Florida, according to the latest update from the US National Hurricane Center (NHC).
In an update at 5am local time, the NHC warned there is a danger of life-threatening storm surge along the coast from east-central Florida northward to southern Georgia, where a storm surge warning remains in place.
“Damaging hurricane-force winds, especially in gusts, will continue for a few more hours in east-central and northeastern Florida. Residents are urged to remain in an interior room and away from windows,” it said.
The NHC said heavy rainfall across the central to northern Florida Peninsula throughout the morning brings the risk of considerable flash flooding along with moderate-to-major river flooding
More than three million homes and businesses are now without power in Florida, according poweroutage.us
Before Hurricane Milton even made landfall, tornadoes were touching down across the state. The Spanish Lakes Country Club near Fort Pierce, on Florida’s Atlantic Coast, was hit particularly hard, with homes destroyed and some residents killed.
St Petersburg recorded over 16in (41cm) of rain, prompting the National Weather Service to warn of flash flooding there as well as other parts of western and central Florida.
Tropicana Field, the home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team in St Petersburg, appeared badly damaged.
The fabric that serves as the domed stadium’s roof was ripped to shreds by the fierce winds. It was not immediately clear if there was damage inside. Multiple cranes were also toppled in the storm, the weather service said.
St Petersburg residents also could no longer get water from their household taps because a water main break led the city to shut down service.
“We have lost some life,” St Lucie County sheriff Keith Pearson told WPBF News, though he would not say how many people were killed.
The hurricane is expected to affect the heavily populated Orlando area – Associated Press
‘It was quite frightening’ – Irish tourist in Orlando
An Irish woman has told of her family’s experience of Hurricane Milton at their hotel in Orlando where they arrived last Thursday for a two-week holiday.
Paige Comerford is accompanied by her mother and two sisters, one of whom is only three years old. They were in the eye of the hurricane at present, she told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.
There were very high winds, she said, adding that “the windows are shaking”.
It had been “pretty frantic” at the hotel seeing people arriving with their pets and all their belongings, she said.
“It is hard to see because obviously we’re very lucky to be in a hotel room. But yeah, it’s fair to say that we’re just on holidays here. Obviously it’s not ideal for us, but this is people’s real lives that they’re evacuated from. It’s very hard to see,” she said.
“It was quite frightening. We’ve been advised to not stand too close to windows. So we’re just trying to keep an eye on the winds. But yeah it is quite frightening and especially they’ve advised us to use the stairwell rather than the elevator, just in case the power goes out, you’d be stuck in the elevator.
“The stairwell in the hotel has actually started flooding on the first floor ... in Ireland we are well used to rain and wind, but not to this extent when lives are being lost all over the country,” she said.
– Vivienne Clarke
BBC apologises for weather app forecasting ‘hurricane force winds’ for UK
Meanwhile, in the UK, the BBC has apologised for its weather app and website incorrectly forecasting “hurricane force winds” to hit the UK as it works to fix data issues.
Graphics showed London was set to experience winds of more than 13,000mph on Thursday while Nottingham would have overnight temperatures of 404 degrees.
BBC broadcast meteorologist Matt Taylor assured the public that Hurricane Milton, the category three storm that made landfall in Florida overnight, was not on its way to the UK.
“Don’t be alarmed folks – Hurricane Milton hasn’t made it to us here in the UK!”, he wrote on X alongside a screenshot of an extreme prediction on the weather app.
“There’s been a data glitch between our suppliers and the app/online. Folk are working to solve the issue.
“No need to panic buy plywood and candles.”
Lead BBC weather presenter and meteorologist Simon King also assured users of the website and app that there will not be “14408mph winds, hurricane force winds or overnight temperatures of 404C” in a social media post.
Meanwhile, BBC weather presenter Carol Kirkwood told BBC Breakfast viewers the weather centre was experiencing a “technical glitch” that they were trying to fix “right now”.
A statement from BBC weather on social media said: “You may have noticed some data issues on our app and website. We are working hard to fix it quickly.
“Sorry – please bear with us.”
It added that the accurate weather headlines for Thursday included colder, clearer air moving in, rain and drizzle in the south and blustery showers near the east coast – PA.
What about the animals?
The orang-utans have their blankets, the skunks have their personal space. The manatees have pools filled with days’ worth of lettuce, and the rhinos have stalls of bamboo.
On Wednesday, staff members said ZooTampa at Lowry Park was as prepared as it could be for Hurricane Milton. And the animals won’t be alone: 12 workers have volunteered to stay behind at the zoo, which lies in an evacuation zone.
“We have the staff there that know them and can watch and monitor their behaviour and give them what they need to ensure that they’re comfortable,” ZooTampa’s senior director of animal programmes, Tiffany Burns, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
More than 1,000 animals live at the 65-acre zoo, including elephants, giraffes, primates, flamingos, alligators, extinct-in-the-wild Panamanian golden frogs and rare red wolves.
For now, ZooTampa is well within Milton’s projected path. It lies less than 10 miles from Tampa’s waterfront, where the storm surge was expected to exceed 10ft.
Burns said that zoo workers had spent the past few days moving large animals into the night-time shelters adjoining their outdoor habitats, which she said were “hurricane proof.” Smaller mammals and birds had been taken indoors, too. (The alligators will stay in their usual habitats, submerging themselves for safety like their peers in the wild.)
Inside buildings, behind boarded-up windows, zoo workers have chopped vegetables and filled stalls with hay and stalks of bamboo. There is enough food for the animals – and the zoo workers – to last weeks, Burns said. “We want to make sure that we are prepared not only for the storm but for the time after the storm,” she said, when roads might close.
Nearby in Tampa, at the Florida Aquarium, officials decided Wednesday afternoon to send all staff home, based on Milton’s strength on the ground and its expected track, according to Roger Germann, the aquarium’s president and CEO.
“Everyone is standing down,” Germann said at around 4pm, noting the aquarium lies right on the water. “We will not have an overnight Rideout team,” he said. “We boarded the place up and secured it and they are headed home before things get crazy.”
The staff has left all animals well fed, he said, and plans to monitor the premises for flooding using the camera system – as long as power holds up. Earlier in the week, sensitive corals were evacuated to safer locations in Florida and Georgia, and some birds and animals, such as penguins, were taken to upper floors.
“It is hard, don’t get me wrong,” Germann said.
– The New York Times.
Hurricane Milton currently has maximum sustained winds of 140km/h (85mph), according to a recent update from the US National Hurricane Center.
The hurricane is now about 45km east of Orlando as it moves east-northeast across the state, it said, with a Flash Flood Emergency continuing over portions of west-central Florida.
Some 2.9 million homes and businesses are now without power in Florida, according to Poweroutage.us
What impact will Hurricane Milton have on Ireland’s weather?
Although there will be no direct impact from the tail end of the storm as it moves over the Atlantic, it will “indirectly” impact Ireland, making weather forecasts more uncertain.
Read Jade Wilson’s full report here.
Wind speeds have since reduced to a still dangerous 90mph (150km/h), dropping Milton to a Category 1 hurricane, with heavy rains and damaging storm surges.
By early Thursday, the hurricane was located about 45 miles (75km) west-southwest of Cape Canaveral, home to NASA’s Space Force Station.
A flash flood emergency was in effect for the Tampa Bay area including the cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater, the National Hurricane Center said, with St. Petersburg already receiving 16.6in (422mm) of rain on Wednesday.
‘We’ve not ever had anything close to this big of a storm coming,’ says Irish woman living in Tampa Bay area
Across Florida’s Gulf Coast, there was a race to collect and dispose of debris left on streets outside houses and on beaches following Hurricane Helene before Milton’s winds could raise it, bringing further damage.
Edel Quinn, originally from Ennis, Co Clare, who lives in St Petersburg in the Tampa Bay area with her husband Kevin Hing described large mounds of debris “as high as houses” of fridges, dryers and destroyed furniture.
The two recalled seeing a police-escorted convoy of bin trucks heading towards a nearby beach to collect as much as possible before Hurricane Milton’s arrival.
The effort to remove debris was ongoing until late on Tuesday, they said. “There’s so much that they couldn’t clear it all in preparation for Milton,” Mr Hing said on Wednesday, prior to the hurricane’s landfall.
Ms Quinn said Hurricane Helene, which made landfall just two weeks ago “did enormous damage”.
“People have lost everything, they got totally flooded,” she said, adding that Hurricane Milton is “100 times more serious than what we just went through”.
Having lived in Florida for the last 35 years, the 61-year-old lived through previous extreme weather events to hit the state, saying: “We’ve not ever had anything close to this big of a storm coming at us, usually they pass up through the Gulf and I can’t remember anything ever being this big since I’ve been here.”
The couple has already moved further inland twice in recent years due to storms and floods, most recently after Hurricane Irma in 2017, during which they received alerts on their phones in the middle of the night to immediately evacuate their home.
They remained in a school for several days following Hurricane Irma, along with their cats and their belongings. Initially, the hurricane was projected to avoid their home, though it shifted late in the night, they said.
Milton threatens communities still reeling just two weeks after Hurricane Helene flooded streets and homes in western Florida and left at least 230 people dead across the South.
Six to 12 inches (15 to 31 centimetres) of rain, with up to 18 inches (46 centimetres) in some places, was expected well inland, bringing the risk of catastrophic flooding.
One twister touched down on Wednesday morning in the lightly populated Everglades and crossed Interstate 75. Another apparent tornado touched down in Fort Myers, snapping tree limbs and tearing a petrol station’s canopy to shreds.
Authorities have issued mandatory evacuation orders across 15 Florida counties with a total population of about 7.2 million people.
Officials warned that anyone staying behind must fend for themselves, because first responders were not expected to risk their lives attempting rescues at the height of the storm.
St Petersburg mayor Ken Welch told residents to expect long power outages and the possible shutdown of the sewer system – Associated Press
Many of the 125 or so homes destroyed before the hurricane made landfall were mobile homes in communities for senior citizens, Kevin Guthrie, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said.
By late afternoon on Wednesday, some officials said the time to evacuate had passed, suggesting that people who stayed behind hunker down instead. By the evening, some counties announced they had suspended emergency services.
More than 2 million homes and businesses were without power on Wednesday night in Florida, according to poweroutage.us – Associated Press
Hurricane Milton spawned at least 19 tornadoes which caused damage in numerous counties, destroying around 125 homes, most of them mobile homes, according to governor Ron DeSantis.
At least two deaths were reported at a retirement community following a suspected tornado in Fort Pierce on the eastern coast of Florida, NBC News reported, citing St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson.
DeSantis said he hoped Tampa Bay, once seen as the potential bull’s eye, could dodge major damage and that the worst of the predicted storm surge could be avoided thanks to the landfall coming before the high tide. Forecasters said seawater could still rise as high as 4m (13ft).
“At this point, it’s too dangerous to evacuate safely, so you have to shelter in place and just hunker down,” DeSantis said upon announcing the landfall – Reuters
After days of warnings, evacuations and preparation, Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key, Florida at about 8.30pm local time. The US National Hurricane Center reports the hurricane had maximum sustained winds of 120mph (195km/h).
Siesta Key is home to 5,500 people about 112km south of Tampa Bay, which avoided a direct hit.
The Tampa Bay area has not taken a direct hit from a major hurricane in more than a century, but the storm was still bringing a potentially deadly storm surge to much of Florida’s Gulf Coast, including densely populated areas such as Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota and Fort Myers.
About 90 minutes after making landfall, Milton was centred about 30km northeast of Sarasota and had weakened slightly with maximum sustained winds of 175km/h, becoming a Category 2 storm, the hurricane centre reported.
– Associated Press and PA
Earlier today astronaut Matthew Dominick captured this incredible video of Milton from above:
Good morning, and welcome to our live coverage of Hurricane Milton, which has made landfall in Florida, bringing surging waters that have flooded streets in Fort Myers and Sarasota, Florida. Authorities had warned for days of Milton’s deadly potential, ordering an evacuation of millions of people in coastal areas along west Florida’s Gulf coast vulnerable to a predicted storm surge of up to 15ft.
